Constructions scenery (and Mid Build Crane)

[gavino200]

I've been looking for construction related items. I'm going to build a construction site sometime in the future. So I've been looking for stuff to acquire. I came across a interesting looking crane on my search. It's made by "Mid Build" 

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10139588

 

Doesn't seem to be anything sold since 2011. I'm guessing the company went belly-up. Anyone have any idea where I might look to find one of these? I tried ebay and buyee. No luck. I did find their "H-beam frame". Nothing else. 

 

Also I came across a company called "Maruka" that also used to make interesting construction items. Also seems to be defunct. 

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10110886

 

I know about the Tomytec small building construction models. I'll probably get these but I'm really looking for something bigger.

 

I have the blue-green crane from the tomytec car release. I wish now that I bought the whole set. 

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10102674

 

 

Anyone know of any other good construction related products?

 

[gavino200]

I found these Fujimoto models, but it's hard to say if the quality is any good.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Construction-Vehicle-No-1-Fujimoto-FH-NK01-1-150-N-scale/352383939907?hash=item520bb83543:g:S8QAAOxyXDhSgXOD

 

Edit: I found and bought Volume two. I think that's all for now.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10115066

Edited June 28, 2018 by gavino200

[gavino200]

A nice little excavator. Not Japanese but nice. I bought it.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253661952171

[bill937ca]

The problem is all these were issued long ago and I don't recall seeing much since then.  Most of them were small competitors with Tomytec without Tomytec's market muscle. 

[gavino200]

16 minutes ago, bill937ca said:

The problem is all these were issued long ago and I don't recall seeing much since then.  Most of them were small competitors with Tomytec without Tomytec's market muscle. 

 

I feared as much. 2011 is an eternity ago with these products. I was able to find a new Fujimoto Heavy Equipment Vol 2, though. That's from 2010. 

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by gavino200

[gavino200]

There's this crane currently on the market. But I think a crane this big without a driver cab just looks weird.

 

http://www.en.spur-n-kran.de/details.html

[bill937ca]

DM has a category for Construction.

 

https://www.en.dm-toys.de/liste/tags_en/baufahrzeug_en.html

[cteno4]

The fujimoto are decent, they did theirs with colored plastic and not paint so a bit toy looking. Some dullcoat and weathering help.

 

there were a couple of years when everyone jumped on doing construction and odd work vehicles. Tomytec, ftoys, fujimoto, maruka and even bandai had a working vehicle collections of cement trucks. I think they all kind of flooded the market with the series sets. Unfortunately only forklifts were done individually later out of all these vehicles. Most layouts don’t need gobs of construction equipment and I don’t think it as all that collectible at 1/150 although construction equipment is a big larger scale collector market.

 

Yeah studio mid kind of fizzled out there. All that made it out mainly was the crane, building under construction and details. They were doing some road and sidewalks whenit all stopped. The crane is ok except they left plastic between the struts in the boom. It’s also a pretty small crane. It was a pretty cheap design on the boom unfortunately. You could easily make a kit bash of this design from the dm parts.

 

what do you need? I can look thru my sets and see what I could come up with. I got a few extras when the fire saled some of the construction sets. 

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

[gavino200]

7 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

The fujimoto are decent, they did theirs with colored plastic and not paint so a bit toy looking. Some dullcoat and weathering help.

 

there were a couple of years when everyone jumped on doing construction and odd work vehicles. Tomytec, ftoys, fujimoto, maruka and even bandai had a working vehicle collections of cement trucks. I think they all kind of flooded the market with the series sets. Unfortunately only forklifts were done individually later out of all these vehicles. Most layouts don’t need gobs of construction equipment and I don’t think it as all that collectible at 1/150 although construction equipment is a big larger scale collector market.

 

Yeah studio mid kind of fizzled out there. All that made it out mainly was the crane, building under construction and details. They were doing some road and sidewalks whenit all stopped. The crane is ok except they left plastic between the struts in the boom. It’s also a pretty small crane. It was a pretty cheap design on the boom unfortunately. You could easily make a kit bash of this design from the dm parts.

 

what do you need? I can look thru my sets and see what I could come up with. I got a few extras when the fire saled some of the construction sets. 

 

Cheers

 

Jeff

 

Thanks for the history. It does seem like everyone came out with construction stuff around 2010, and then nothing. 

 

I was looking at various crane bits and wondering about a kitbash. I was also wondering if I could splice a driver cab into the driverless crane on DM-toys. 

 

I'm not sure exactly what I'd need. But whatever crane/construction stuff you have that you don't need, I'd be happy to buy from you. It might be a fun project to knock something together. 

Edited June 29, 2018 by gavino200

[cteno4]

This is a good little guy that works on any layout for a little street dig up

 

https://www.en.dm-toys.de/produktdetails/items/Wiking_094607.html

 

btw several of those dm machines are the maruka models.

 

if you come up with a need im happy to see if I can spare something, rather hold onto things and let it out as folks have a specific need if I can.

 

i think that dm could easily be converted into the studio mid design. That studio mid design is common on Japanese building cranes, they don’t usually use use the tower ranges we do in the states and Europe.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

2 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

This is a good little guy that works on any layout for a little street dig up

 

https://www.en.dm-toys.de/produktdetails/items/Wiking_094607.html

 

Yes, I like that one. They have it at MBKline too. I added it to my wishlist along with the Tomytec constuction models and a few other things

 

2 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

 

 

 

if you come up with a need im happy to see if I can spare something, rather hold onto things and let it out as folks have a specific need if I can.

 

Understood. I'll be cogitating on this for a while but I'll let you know.

 

2 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

 

i think that dm could easily be converted into the studio mid design. That studio mid design is common on Japanese building cranes, they don’t usually use use the tower ranges we do in the states and Europe.

 

 

I'll have to do a bit of crane studying. It's not super important if the crane isn't prototypical Japanese. More important is that it looks 'authentic' (to me and the little man). An advantage to the German crane is that it has a "working" mechanism, so it should be good for setting up little scenes. 

[cteno4]

Btw the set of 5 fujimoto vehicles for $31 shipped is a good deal. Useful set. The crane is a rail crane as well.

 

seeing what you have done, kitbashing a Japanese style crane would n at all be out of your wheelhouse! Making it functional is not very demanding for this as well.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[JR 500系]

Interesting project! And yes, most of the construction vehicles were sold out long ago and hard to get by these days... 

 

9 hours ago, gavino200 said:

A nice little excavator. Not Japanese but nice. I bought it.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253661952171

 

This is kinda nice! I like it too!

[maihama eki]

Small excavator.  You see a lot of these (or similar) in Japan.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10531372

 

Kobaru makes a lot of very nice construction detail stuff.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10311317

 

Shapeways is a good source for N-Scale construction hardware as well.  I've bought several things from various shops.

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/PY57EJPP8/n-komatsu-excavator?optionId=59191745&li=marketplace

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/HZFKE3BN5/caterpillar-336-excavator?optionId=59324597&li=marketplace

[gavino200]

4 hours ago, maihama eki said:

Small excavator.  You see a lot of these (or similar) in Japan.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10531372

 

Yes, I like this. I bought it earlier from modeltrainstuff.com

 

4 hours ago, maihama eki said:

Kobaru makes a lot of very nice construction detail stuff.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10311317

 

Thanks. That's great. I added it to my HS wishlist. I'll buy it soon. You can never have too many port-a-potties. 

 

4 hours ago, maihama eki said:

 

Shapeways is a good source for N-Scale construction hardware as well.  I've bought several things from various shops.

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/PY57EJPP8/n-komatsu-excavator?optionId=59191745&li=marketplace

 

https://www.shapeways.com/product/HZFKE3BN5/caterpillar-336-excavator?optionId=59324597&li=marketplace

 

I'll hold off on these for now. First I'll try to get diggers with moving joints and wheels, as they're more fun to play with. I'll probably end up getting these sometime. 

[gavino200]

I also picked up three of these. Two yellow. One white. I'm tempted to get more. Sometimes big construction sites have a fleet of these things lined up around the block.

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10454213

[gavino200]

I bought this, and the two Tomytec unfinished frame buildings. I'd like to try kitbashing them into a midsized office building under construction. 

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10139591

[gavino200]

This F-toys set from 2009 would be nice to find. Although, the extendable crane with rams in two positions is almost identical to the Tomytec one (which I have). 

 

https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10089438

[gavino200]

Nice crane. Unfortunately it looks HO (at least).

 

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2o8anq

 

Edit: Yes, it 1:50

 

https://www.miniature-construction-world.co.uk/liebherr-630ec-h40.html

Edited June 30, 2018 by gavino200

[gavino200]

Interesting little construction scene. I wouldn't do this, as I like to be able to move my stuff around. But I admire it as a technical achievement.

 

 

[cteno4]

We have a local z scale club that has a guy that’s animated z scale excavators like this with arduino control! Really amazing. I thought I had the YouTube linked here somewhere but can’t find them.

 

 

jeff

[gavino200]

47 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

We have a local z scale club that has a guy that’s animated z scale excavators like this with arduino control! Really amazing. I thought I had the YouTube linked here somewhere but can’t find them.

 

 

jeff

 

Hmmm. That actually sounds like a fun project. All I had to hear was the word 'Arduino' .

 

The same guy has animated the German crane that we were discussing the other day.

 

 

Edited July 4, 2018 by gavino200

[cteno4]

Yeah the problem with cranes is moving them slowly and gently enough to not have the wire swing wildly as the mass needed to keep the line taught becomes a lot of momentum.

 

ill email one of the club members to see if I can get the YouTube again of the z scale.

 

jeff

[nscalestation]

Construction scenes are great on a Japanese layout as there always seems to be construction going on, at least in Tokyo.  I have included 2 scenes on one of my modules using a combination of products available and some scratch building.  I have documented some of this on my blog. 

 

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-building-being-demolished-scene.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2018/03/subway-construction-site-details.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2018/03/more-construction-site-fencing.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-climbing-tower-crane.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2017/03/starting-subway-construction-scene.html

 

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, nscalestation said:

Construction scenes are great on a Japanese layout as there always seems to be construction going on, at least in Tokyo.  I have included 2 scenes on one of my modules using a combination of products available and some scratch building.  I have documented some of this on my blog. 

 

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-building-being-demolished-scene.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2018/03/subway-construction-site-details.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2018/03/more-construction-site-fencing.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-climbing-tower-crane.html

http://tokyo-in-nscale.blogspot.com/2017/03/starting-subway-construction-scene.html

 

 

Thanks nscalestation!! Those scenes are great. Your blog is fantastic btw. I expect that I'll spend countless hours there in future getting inspiration and studying your technique.